Film #60: Sophie's Choice

Alan J. Pakula, the man who produced To Kill a Mockingbird and directed, among others, All The President's Men and The Parallax View, wrote and directed this majestic, extremely faithful adaptation of Pulitzer-Prize-winner William Styron's stunning semi-autobiographical novel. In it, Peter MacNichol endearingly plays Stingo, a young 40s-era Southerner who journeys to "a place as strange as

Film #59: Of Unknown Origin

Greatest rat movie ever made? Forget Willard! Fuck Ben! Don't even think about mentioning Ratatouille! Check out Of Unknown Origin, the rat extravaganza to beat all! George Pan Cosmatos (Tombstone) directed this 1983 Canadian production starring Peter Weller as a successful white-collar executive with a hot wife (Shannon Tweed), a little tyke, a new brownstone, and a helluva problem. When

The beginnings of my Web TV career

Well, since it's now history, I should include the three clips of me on The Latest Show on Earth, Joe Hendel's now kaput web TV program. Joe, it turns out, just didn't have the energy for an almost daily talk show (it IS a lotta work), so it's permanently on hold. It's too bad, but I'll continue onward, and probably launch a web TV thing of my own soon enough. RIP The Latest Show on Earth. But

Film #58: Foolin' Around

One of the ultimate "Saturday Afternoon" movies for me is what looked to me to be a waste of time at first glance--and this was when I was 15 or so! I know. Foolin' Around looks terrible. But I was quite smitten with HBO back in 1981 or so, and would watch anything they showed. And I'm glad because I love Foolin' Around. It's a dumb li'l movie following Texas architechture student Gary Busey

Film #57: The Verdict

Paul Newman delivers a career-best performance in this comeback film from director Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Prince of the City, Network). In it, he plays Frank Galvin, an alcoholic, ambulance-chasing lawyer whose recent string of lost cases has put him in a desperate situation. He's given one last chance at a moneymaker by a working class family who're suing a powerful, Catholic-run hospital

Film #56: They Live

Scaremeister John Carpenter called the shots on this massively entertaining (and overlooked) variation on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers theme. World Championship Wrestling staple "Rowdy" Roddy Piper stars in They Live as an L.A. drifter who uncovers an alien takeover of earth after stumbling upon a pair of glasses that allows the wearer to see both the aliens and the Big-Brother way they've

Film #55: Sharky's Machine

All Atlantans of a certain age have a soft spot for this Burt Reynolds movie that, like it or not, remains one of the best ones ever shot in the ATL. I think it's a lotta fun and probably Reynolds' finest directorial outing. It's adapted from Georgia author William Diehl's best sellerabout Tom Sharky, an Atlanta homicide detective obsessively tracking a local mobster (a slimy Vittorio Gassman).

Film #54: The Secret of NIMH

Former Disney animator Don Bluth was so fed up with how the pre-Little Mermaid animation department was going that he broke away and formed his own animation studio, with The Secret of NIMH being their first offering. At a time when Disney animation seemed dead--the early 80s--Bluth's first solo effort was an extremely welcome pleasure that trumpeted a new force in the animation field. But,

Film #53: One on One

This is one of those "Saturday Afternoon" movies I like so much--sort of funny, sort of dramatic, a little romantic, not too demanding but not totally stupid either. Just real breezy and simple. Star Robby Benson co-wrote this likable story of a pampered high school basketball star who gets a scholarship to play with UCLA, but finds himself overwhelmed by a backbreaking practice regimen, a full

Film #52: The Naked Jungle

Producer George Pal rarely strayed out of the fantasy/sci-fi genre. He pioneeered animated shorts by creating the Puppetoon series of stop-motion animation shorts (he adapted two Dr. Seuss stories into shortform: I Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street and The 500 Hats of Batholomew Cubbins). His films won four Oscars for special effects (The War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide, The Time Machine

Film #51: Muertos de Risa (Dying of Laughter)

Muertos de Risa (Dying of Laughter) is wildman Spanish director Alex de la Iglasia's raucous comedy about an Abbott and Costello-esque comedy team (expertly overplayed by El Gran Wyoming and Santiago Segura) who shoot each other dead on live TV, then are eulogized by their manager (Alex Angulo, the priest from de la Iglasia's equally accomplished Day of the Beast). Through flashbacks it's

Film #50: The Killing Fields

British documentarian Roland Joffe made his narrative filmmaking debut in 1984 with The Killing Fields, a devastating and suspenseful film about a real-life friendship. Sam Waterston plays Sidney Schanberg, an obsessive New York Times reporter stationed in Cambodia during the last days of the Vietnam War. Dr. Haing S. Ngor, in an Oscar-winning performance, plays Dith Pran, Schanberg's trusted

Film #49: The Hudsucker Proxy

1994's The Hudsucker Proxy is still Joel and Ethan Coen's gentlest, most magical movie. Its fairy-tale ambitions mix tastefully with good ol' Capra-corn and the Coens' own brand of hyperkinetic filmmaking, resulting in a gigantic comedy with philosophical musings on time and fate. Tim Robbins plays bumbling mailroom nebbish and aspiring inventor Norville Barnes. After mere hours on the job at the

Film #48: The Fly (1986)

David Cronenberg's unique take on the 1958 sci-fi staple The Fly stands as one of the few remakes that actually improves upon its predecessor, chiefly because of its superb lead performances and the infusion of Cronenberg's singular, biology-obsessed worldview into the story. Jeff Goldblum expertly portrays eccentric scientist Seth Brundle, whose invention of "telepods" goes horribly awry when he

Film #47: Dragonslayer

This Disney/Paramount co-production was almost completely overlooked when released in the summer of 1981--it was eclipsed by a little film called Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it deserves an unearthing, and a nicer DVD release that acknowledges its quality. In it, then-newcomer Peter MacNichol plays an inept sorcerer's apprentice who takes on the responsibility of slaying the massive

Film #46: Coal Miner's Daughter

Sissy Spacek rightfully won an Oscar for her portrayal of country music legend Loretta Lynn in this smartly-produced bio-pic directed by British filmmaker Michael Apted (the man behind the 7 Up series of documentaries). The film follows her from her life as the oldest of a brood of kids belonging to a Kentucky coal miner and his wife, to her marriage at 14 to a self-assured WWII vet named

Side Orders #3

Okay, this isn't really an opening to a movie I like, but it does feature a favorite opening song of mine---I mean, it rocks, and you can't get it out of your head!! A real earworm. Anyway, this is sort of a fan vid for a movie called The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid (El sheriff y el pequeño extraterrestre in Italian!). I have an interesting little story about this movie under my belt, but for

Bet 100 on The Flaming Nose

This is the intro to a ten-part series I'm contributing to The Flaming Nose, the web's premier website devoted to television. With each of my introductory articles, I'll be covering my very personal choices for my 100 favorite TV series of all time. I'm about to post #70-61, so if you haven't checked all three previous articles out, do. And make time for everything else TV-related at The

Film #45: The Celebration

The Dogme 95 film movement was the brainchild of Danish directors Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who, on a spring day in 1995 Copenhagen, penned a filmmaking "Vow of Chastity" as a laugh and a liberating gesture from the expensive technologies and tired formulas that plague many filmmakers. Then, along with fellow Danes Soren Kragh-Jacobsen and Christian Levring, they created Dogma 95,

Film #44: Straight Time

Since 1972, Dustin Hoffman had been obsessed with making Straight Time, an adaptation of ex-convict Ed Bunker's novel No Beast So Fierce. It was meant to be the actor's directorial debut but, concluding that directing and performing were chores too big for him to handle in tandem, he brought in British director Ulu Grosbard to helm things behind the camera. Good move, because in 1978's sadly

Film #43: Trans

Florida filmmaker Julius Goldberger's Trans splashed down at 1999's Sundance festival like a minor post-French New Wave masterwork unearthed decades after being inturred, mysteriously, near the swampy Everglades. Plainly influenced by Truffaut's The 400 Blows -- Goldberger obviously wanted more after Antoine Doniel reached the ocean tide -- Trans follows juvenile prison escapee Ryan Kazinski (

Film #42: Sisters

This is the first in a promised series of shorter posts, for those of you who don't have no durn time...Made back when De Palma’s Hitchcock-cribbing packed more charm than it did in later years, Sisters stars Margot Kidder as surgically-separated Siamese twins, one of whom is degenerating into a knife-wielding killer. Jennifer Salt is the newspaper columnist who witnesses one of Kidder’s murders